Quotes on Being Real

The truth has never been of any real value to any human being - it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

Being realistic is the most commonly travelled road to mediocracy

Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.

Just imagine becoming the way you used to be as a very young child, before you understood the meaning of any word, before opinions took over your mind. The real you is loving, joyful, and free. The real you is just like a flower, just like the wind, just like the ocean, just like the sun.

It is better to be silent and be real than to talk and not be real.

Well, I don't want to be king, I want to be real.

Taking the things people do wrong seriously is part of taking them seriously. It’s part of letting their actions have weight. It’s part of letting their actions be actions rather than just indifferent shopping choices; of letting their lives tell a life-story, with consequences, and losses, and gains, rather than just be a flurry of events. It’s part of letting them be real enough to be worth loving, rather than just attractive or glamorous or pretty or charismatic or cool.

I think you have a pact with an audience in every picture, and I think the pact is to try and be truthful and to be real.

The spiritual life is not a life before, after, or beyond our everyday existence. No, the spiritual life can only be real when it is lived in the midst of the pains and joys of the here and now.

Real excellence and humility are not incompatible one with the other, on the contrary they are twin sisters.

Being realistic is the most commonly traveled road to mediocrity. Why would you be realistic? What's the point of being realistic? I'm going to do it. It's done. It's already done. The second I decide it's done, it's already done.

My father has a general rule. He says if I haven't done it in real life I shouldn't do it on-screen.

His scorn of the great is repeated too often to be real; no man thinks much of that which he despises.

They must be real people. And this means that every word in every line of speech must be accurate and full of some kind of meaning which stretches not only forward in the book but stems from before in the book.

I really see no harm which can come of giving our children a little knowledge of physiology. ... The instruction must be real, based upon observation, eked out by good explanatory diagrams and models, and conveyed by a teacher whose own knowledge has been acquired by a study of the facts; and not the mere catechismal parrot-work which too often usurps the place of elementary teaching.

What's the subject of life - to get rich? All of those fellows out there getting rich could be dancing around the real subject of life.

You had been a paper boy to me all these years - two dimensions as a character on the page and two different, but still flat, dimensions as a person. But that night you turned out to be real.

That’s what she was, Joanna felt suddenly. That’s what they all were, all the Stepford wives: actresses in commercials, pleased with detergents and floor wax, with cleansers, shampoos, and deodorants. Pretty actresses, big in the bosom but small in the talent, playing housewives unconvincingly, too nicey-nice to be real.

Attempts to wake before our time are often punished, especially by those who love us most. Because they, bless them, are asleep. They think anyone who wakes up, or who, still asleep, realizes that what is taken to be real is a ‘dream’ is going crazy.

If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.

It takes skill to be real. Time to heal each other